Pre-marital Relationships and the Family in Modern India
This paper is an inquiry into a form of intimate relationship that is garnering much public attention in contemporary India, namely, the pre-marital relationship. In order to query the rhetoric of individual agency and “freedom” that often gets associated with pre-marital relationships, this paper e...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Centre d’Etudes de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud
2017-08-01
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| Series: | South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/samaj/4379 |
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| Summary: | This paper is an inquiry into a form of intimate relationship that is garnering much public attention in contemporary India, namely, the pre-marital relationship. In order to query the rhetoric of individual agency and “freedom” that often gets associated with pre-marital relationships, this paper explores the family’s involvement in pre-marital relationships of young adults aged 24–31. The paper argues that though pre-marital relationships often fashion themselves as a disjuncture from the narrative of marriage, in reality, they model themselves on structures and expectations of a marital union. This paper also pays attention to the ways in which families position themselves vis-à-vis pre-marital relationships. Specifically, it discusses the strategies by which the family can obstruct or encourage certain pre-marital relationships over others, thereby highlighting the bearing of the family’s involvement in changing the course of a relationship: either from a non-serious form of relationship to a committed one, or leading to the breaking up of the relationship. |
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| ISSN: | 1960-6060 |